3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



come the present ambulance system of the world for Europe 

 copied us in this matter. 



The putting to sleep of Lemuel Shattuck's noble report by 

 apathetic legislators did not prevent progressive minds from 

 pursuing the subject, and there was a knot of men in Boston 

 who kept up interest in the work by stated meetings among 

 themselves, and occasional public meetings, at one of which 

 Edward Everett delivered one of his most brilliant addresses; 

 but when they ascended Beacon Hill and took the practical steps 

 of asking for the organization of a State Board of Health, it was 

 sure to be defeated by the rural legislator from " way back,"^ 

 typified by the one who said, " Them boards don't do no good^ 

 and they cost a sight o' money." Just before the war the pros- 

 pect became hopeful, and then came the imperative " Halt ! " to 

 all the lines of forward-marching progress. During the four- 

 long, bitter years of contest the whole land had taken a lesson^ 

 in the value of organized action, and as soon as we had caught 

 our breath the march was resumed with a quickened step. 

 Meantime England had made great strides in practical sanita- 

 tion, and it had begun to be stoutly held that some of the most 

 destructive diseases are not the visitations of an angry God for 

 the moral derelictions of people, but are the direct and palpable 

 outcome of the neglect of sanitary laws. Especially was it be- 

 lieved in England that typhoid fever, the decimating scourge 

 of young manhood and young womanhood, can be averted ; and 

 on this side the water Dr. Bowditch had instituted an inquiry 

 looking to discovering the preventable causes of consumption. 

 The results, printed only for private circulation, made a great 

 impression in medical circles for bacteriology with its tubercle 

 bacillus had not been even heard of. The phrases Preventive or 

 State medicine had begun to be used, when, in 1869, a remarkable 

 concatenation of circumstances, consisting of two distinct lines 

 of action, resulted in the establishment of the Massachusetts- 

 Board of Health. Repeated repulses at the State House had com- 

 pletely disheartened the advocates of State medicine in Bos- 

 ton, but unexpected help was coming to their aid from the ex- 

 treme western part of the State. Those familiar with the annals- 

 of sanitation will recall a fearful visitation known as the Maple- 

 wood Fever, which occurred in the year 1864 in Pittsfield, at the 

 Young Ladies' Institute, in which out of seventy-seven pupils- 

 fifty-one had typhoid fever of a virulent type, and thirteen died 

 as the result of purely local causes, the direct result of ignorant 

 sanitary neglect. The outbreak occurred in August, and in Sep- 

 tember, at the instance of Thomas F. Plunkett (husband of the 

 writer), three of the professors, who had come to give their annual 

 courses of lectures in the Berkshire Medical College, undertook a 



